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Home Truths by Sara Maitland, Chatto & Windus, pp 256, £15.99

Sara Maitland has no time for trifles: she is concerned with what it
is to be human, and how we make sense of that predicament. In her novel
Home Truths, Clare Kerslaka suffers post-traumatic amnesia after climbing
Mount Nyangani in Zimbabwe with her lover David, who vanishes. The locals
offer three reasons for the disappearance of walkers – the dangerous terrain
and unpredictable climate, terrorists and angry spirits – but Clare can
think of another; that she killed him.

Exhausted by her inability to answer the crucial question, and trying
to come to terms with the loss of her hand in the accident, Clare is brought
home to Scotland, where her large, loving family members are exposed, allowing
Maitland to evaluate the belief systems that afford us comfort in the absence
of hard evidence. Anni’s fascination with mathematics raises the issue of
whether proof equals truth, while Hester’s and Ceci’s faith in God challenges
the need for proof as a necessary condition of belief.

The wild nature that claims lives is contrasted with nature tamed through
science: Joseph’s mathematical puzzle offers cosy logical reasoning, Anni’s
fractals reduce chaos to order, Hester’s aga-cat – a fibre-glass all-terrain
vehicle – helps her to negotiate the rough Highlands, while Clare makes
a determined attempt to assimilate her awe on seeing the Victoria Falls
by mugging up on statistics. But nature remains unruly, and above all dangerous.
The lesson to be learnt is that danger must be embraced, and risks taken.

Clare comes to understand that human nature is equally unwilling to
submit to authority. When she first compared her myoelectric hand with
Alice’s hearing aid, she forces a celebratory note: ‘Alice and I carry scientific
magic around with us. We’re modern witches. Electronic witches.’ But in
the end being human, even if this means being ‘hearing impaired’ or being
an amputee, is presented as preferable to being a cyborg. Alice’s hearing
aid only brings noise into her tranquil world, while Clare’s hand seems
to have an unwelcome will of its own.

Ultimately what Maitland is questioning is the value of having faith
in any cosmology. At one point Anni remarks that losing faith is not about
growing disillusioned but ‘dis-visioned’ – such is the power of a credo.
As Clare learns that no belief system can adequately account for life’s
unexpected twists, it gradually dawns on her that what she needs is not
understanding but confession, not so that a safe God will restore her peace
of mind, but so that she can make a pact to live under a God that is as
wild and dangerous as nature.

Marina Benjamin is an editor and critic.